Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, always a good time
Another six weeks, another transfer finished! We posed with our mission family one last time.
As always, these fine men and women are inspiring to us. They’re dedicated, diligent, hard workers. And they’re also young, goofy, and hilarious. It’s an honor to serve alongside them.
Every week we gather with a handful of young adults in the Valley to have an activity together. ‘Tis the season, so last week as a group we decided to decorate gingerbread houses today. Pepper and I volunteered to buy some g-bread house kits and bring them, but when we looked at the selection at the store, we realized they’re all garbage. The gingerbread doesn’t look at all tasty (although the box says it’s technically edible), and the “frosting” and “candies” included in the kit aren’t anything I’d want to ingest. We made a last-minute decision to decorate Christmas cookies instead.
That meant we had to get to work making cookies! I whipped up a batch of sugar-cookie dough. Then we thought about how many people might attend, and I whipped up a second batch. That’s when I learned that two batches make a lot of sugar cookies!
We rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, baked them, put them on cooling racks, added them to bags, and repeated the process. Again and again. By the end we had four massive bags of cookies!
We hastily made a big bowl of frosting and hustled over to the activity. Everyone seemed excited to do this, and we went to work decorating (and eating).
We’d bought some fun sprinkles, and there were some cool creations!
I’m more of a traditionalist, and my cookies are pretty simple…
We spent almost two hours talking, laughing, and decorating. Even after that, we still had bags of cookies left over. No one complained about taking them home, though.
We’ll call it a success. And now I have a plate full of cookies to give to friends!
My friend Wayland wore an amazing suit to our Christmas party today.
Not only was it completely obnoxious, it even had lights sewn into the fabric so he was constantly blinking. And all for ten bucks!
It reminded me of Richard’s Christmas suit last year. I gotta get one of these!
I haven’t been to New York City yet, but when I go I hope I can get this tourist shirt.
After graduating college, every December I’d sit down and handwrite a few dozen Christmas cards for friends and family. It seemed like a good way to reach out to people I don’t see very often, and a fun tradition. Over the years, the number of people on my list grew. Eventually it wasn’t practical to handwrite everything, so I’d make newsletters or custom cards. They became more elaborate, too, and morphed into crazy, often silly designs. Soon there was a sort of expectation from friends about what we’d send… What wacky card will the Schroeders send this year?
Sometime around 2013, our list passed 200 people.
Last Christmas I ordered 350 cards. We keep accumulating friends!
Even though we’re serving a mission, I felt like it was important to keep the tradition alive. In fact, it seemed even more important because there are some people on my list who don’t really hear from me (or me from them) but once a year. So they wouldn’t even know we were serving a mission! What better way to update them on this big change in our lives? I shifted my creative gears to come up with a design for our annual card.
A postcard seemed appropriate. I modeled it on one of those old-school cards you’d buy at a gift shop.
Oh, and we had to update our list. We’ve met so many great people here: all the missionaries we’ve served with in the Valley, the senior missionaries scattered around San Diego, our young adult group, our seminary class, and of course the friends we’ve met in our wards. By the time we finished our spreadsheet, we’d reached 460 names. Oof.
At this point our process is a well-oiled machine. Designing the card takes the most time– by far– and then it’s all about creating an assembly line to stuff envelopes and label and stamp everything. We finished this evening.
Is an “assembly line” card a little impersonal? Probably. But is it a tradition I think is worth continuing? Definitely.
The day after Thanksgiving is always a day off work, right? That’s also true for our mission work: with the holiday behind us, we found ourselves with a free day. It was sort of an odd feeling– for six months we’ve been busy every day and now we had time to do something on our own. After a bit of thought, we decided on Joshua Tree National Park.
El Centro is blisteringly hot in the summer, and also very flat. The environs are all farmland or a dusty wasteland. That means there hasn’t been much opportunity to hike, which is one of my favorite activities. I was excited to get out and put some miles under my feet (and I don’t mean running around town for exercise). We drove up to the park and spent the day exploring.
The cholla “forest” was fascinating. These cacti look like short, fun, fluffy trees, right?
I knew from previous experience that cholla are not to be trifled with. What looks fuzzy is a tight group of tiny, very persistent spines. Pepper learned the hard way when she accidentally brushed against a few clumps lying on the ground. They stuck into the flesh of her legs, as well as the fabric of her shoes.
This doesn’t look bad, but we had to carefully pluck dozens of spines from her skin. Later in the day, her ankle was bruised and had a whole group of little blood spots from the spines. Ouch.
There were awesome rock formations to climb. This area is mostly sandstone, which is rough and “sticky”, making it fabulous for traction. We spent a while wandering and scaling these massive piles of rocks.
The desert plant life was really interesting, although it didn’t have much variation. There were maybe half a dozen distinct types of plants in the park.
We weren’t able to do any of the “serious” hikes in the park, because they were quite long and would’ve required the entire day or even an overnight itinerary. But we tackled a few short ones, as well as one that was several miles in length.
It was great to wander the desert. The sky was overcast all day, and the temperature hovered in the mid-50s, so it was the perfect temperature for hiking. The Joshua trees are fascinating and sort of otherworldly.
After a long day, we headed out of the park and looked for a place to grab dinner. We stumbled on a hole-in-the-wall pizza place that turned out to be really good… the best pizza we’ve had since moving here! And as everyone knows, after a good solid day of hiking, pizza is especially delicious.
I’m grateful we had an opportunity to do some hiking again. It’s good for my soul.
Holidays on a mission are a little different.
Without the opportunity to be with family, or even in your own familiar comfortable home, it doesn’t feel quite right. And for the young missionaries– some of whom are away from home for the first time– it can be especially hard. Homesickness is real. We decided to throw a little Thanksgiving party for the missionaries serving in the Valley. Not only would it help them not be alone, it would mean we weren’t alone either.
One of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes is cranberry bread. I went to work.
Unfortunately we don’t have any mini-loaf pans. I used our muffin tin and baked the bread.
Well, I learned something: cranberry muffins aren’t nearly as good as cranberry bread. Why not? Because a bread can be pretty dense and sliced so it’s okay… but you expect a muffin to be light and fluffy. These were decidedly not light and fluffy, and felt a little like biting into a chunk of fruitcake. A failed experiment, and next time I’ll buy some pans.
Anyway, as Pepper prepared the bulk of the meal, I brought out the good china. Well, not quite… I went to the upstairs apartment (which the Church is renting, but no one is occupying at the moment) and stole a bunch of the nice furniture. The result wasn’t too bad.
Several of the missionaries had been invited to eat with friends and church members, so our guests were those who hadn’t. Dinner was great.
Afterward we chatted and laughed for a while. Although I’m sure none of them felt like it was the same as Thanksgiving at home with their families, I hope they all felt our love and admiration for them.
Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are, especially if you’re not at home. Life is good.
Every transfer, the missionaries are excited to go to the Imperial Sand Dunes. Sometimes we beg off, because we have a busy day and have already been there many times. But today we joined the group and rode in the party van with five of the sisters.
It was, of course, a ton of fun. Now that the weather isn’t so hot, we don’t have to get up before dawn. It also means the dune racers are out– hundreds of people flock to the desert with their ATVs, UTVs, and dirtbikes. We claimed a spot at the top of a prominent dune and spent a couple hours hanging out, snowboarding (err, sandboarding), eating, chatting, laughing, and generally enjoying a gorgeous day.
It included a tense game of… chess?
Someone had the idea of forming the word JESUS in the sand. If you stand back and squint your eyes just right, you can make out the word…
Happily, there was some ultimate as well.
Good times.
I’m working on our annual Christmas card, and I asked Zack for a picture of him “doing something cool”. He responded that all he really does these days is work (full time) and go to school (also full time). And occasionally he hits the slopes on his snowboard.
Well, I can work with that. He put on his work scrubs and picked up his snowboard, and sent this photo:
While that’s a fun picture, it feels a little strange for our Christmas card. I worked a bit of magic…
The doctor is in! Now he looks much more impressive.
A few months ago we welcomed a new senior couple to our mission: the Nielsons.
When we first met them over dinner, we were chatting about our lives. One of the questions they asked was where we’d come from. We said Montana, but actually we’d spent many years in Colorado, where we’d raised our kids. Where in Colorado? they asked. Near Denver. Suburbs? Yeah, north of Boulder. Longmont, to be specific. (We find that most people have never heard of Longmont, but many know of Boulder and even more know of Denver… so we typically work in that order depending on how familiar they are with Colorado.) But prior to Longmont, we mentioned, we’d lived in Superior. And before that, Aurora. At that they perked up. Aurora? Where? Oh, you know Aurora? Well, we were down by Chambers and Parker. That’s where we live!
It turns out they attend the Piney Creek Ward… the first ward we attended as a couple, after getting married in 1996! Moreover, they showed us their house on a map and it’s about two blocks from the townhome where we lived. Oh, and their daughter babysat Alex and Kyra a couple of times. Whoa. What felt really strange was we really had no recollection of them at all. But we know the same people (still living there), and some of them continue receiving our annual Christmas cards.
It’s been nearly three decades, and we’re a thousand miles from Aurora, but here we are, serving missions together. It’s a small world indeed.